Treatment of HIV infection with antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) has markedly reduced the death rate from AIDS and improved the quality of life of HIV-infected individuals. Combination antiretroviral drug therapy, e.g., highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), is very effective at suppressing HIV-1 replication, which reduces viral load from millions of HIV-1 RNA copies per ml or plasma to single copy levels, where it can be maintained indefinitely with proper treatment adherence and in the absence of adverse drug events.
HAARTs fail to eradicate the HIV-1 virus due to persistence of the virus in a long-lived pool of latently infected cells residing primarily in the resting memory CD4+ T-cells population. While HAART reduces the viral load in many patients to levels below the current limits of detection, the rapid mutation rate of the HIV virus limits the efficacy of this therapy, rendering HAART ineffective in treating latent HIV infection as the virus persists in cellular reservoirs as latent proviral integrants. Continual “leaky” HIV-1 replication and activation of these latently infected cells can spur virus rebound within weeks of HAART interruption. An additional site of infection is the microglial cell and perivascular macrophage populations in the brain where activated HIV infection can lead to neurocognitive disorders even in the presence of HAART. HIV may also persist in other myeloid lineage cells and in hematopoietic stem cells.
Eliminating the latent reservoir is particularly challenging since it is established during the earliest stages of the infection. The reservoir is typically found in long-lived cells and it is likely that the reservoir can be replenished during episodes of viremia or by homeostatic replacement of latently infected cells. Complete eradication of HIV in patients is the final goal for HIV treatment, but unfeasible with current antiretroviral agents. Since intensification of antiviral regimens does not eradicate the latent pool from the infected host, there is a need to develop entirely novel forms of therapy. Most approaches to date have involved some type of cell activation through mitogens, cytokines/chemokines or HDAC inhibitors to up-regulate gene expression, which by default may also activate HIV-1 mRNA expression from latent proviruses. Unfortunately, these treatments are pleotropic and are not specifically designed for the few memory T cells harboring latent HIV-1.